Chinese Punishment Against Companies That Recognize Taiwan Is Unsurprising

WITH REPORTS that Chinese regulators are moving to crack down on multinational companies who display “Taiwan” as a separate country from China on their websites, this is nothing particularly new, the labelling of Taiwan by multinational companies having long been a site of identity contestation. The recent wave of reactions includes Delta Airlines, Zara, and medical equipment producer Medtronics, and appears to primarily be a reaction to hotel chain Marriott listing both Hong Kong and Taiwan as countries on its website in China, something for which Marriott was forced to shut down its website for a week.

Photo credit: Comunicacioninditex/WikiCommons/CC

Some websites do, however, list Taiwan as a separate country than China on their international websites. This is sometimes because multinational companies also wish to keep their Taiwanese clients happy, with Taiwanese clients and lobbying organizations sometimes calling on multinational companies to list Taiwan as a separate country from China. It is possible that at some point in the future, China will move towards keeping closer tabs on which countries do this. The government may threaten retaliatory measures against these companies’ operations in China if they do not change their international company websites to list Taiwan as part of China.

Reactions against Delta Airlines, Zara, Medtronics, and Marriott in China come at a time in which the Chinese government has escalated military actions aimed at intimidating Taiwan. Such forms of intimidation come in the form of China sailing its sole aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, through the Taiwan Straits, sending fighter planes into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone, and unilaterally announcing the M503 flight route that would pass through the center of the Taiwan Straits, even when this represents an incursion on Taiwanese airspace.

Poster for “My Dear Boy.” Photo credit: Taiwan Television

In general, one observes that Taiwanese companies doing business with China, Taiwanese entertainers, and multinational companies doing business with China, all face the possibility of China’s political ire, which, as observed in the cancellation of “My Dear Boy,” can sometimes be misdirected. However, seeing as Taiwan is a much smaller market than China, in most cases, one generally expects that when push comes to shove, multinational companies will have to comply with China. Those Taiwanese companies or entertainers who depend largely on their business with China for survival will do the same.

In this sense, Taiwan will always lose out to China where rational interest in concerned, because this is simply how the market dictates values rather than vice-versa. But this uphill challenge is nothing new to Taiwan and will likely continue as a structural condition faced by Taiwan.

Brian Hioe was one of the founding editors of New Bloom. He is a freelance writer on social movements and politics, and occasional translator. A New York native and Taiwanese-American, he has an MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University and graduated from New York University with majors in History, East Asian Studies, and English Literature. He was Democracy and Human Rights Service Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy from 2017 to 2018.

About New Bloom

New Bloom is an online magazine covering activism and youth politics in Taiwan and the Asia Pacific, founded in Taiwan in 2014 in the wake of the Sunflower Movement. We seek to put local voices in touch with international discourse, beginning with Taiwan.